Seasoning and Flavoring
Read this tip to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Prepared Meals and Meal Plans and other Prepared Food topics.
Seasoning and Flavoring
You are trying to decide whether or not you should add extra seasoning or flavoring to your prepared food. It is important first to know the difference between seasoning and flavoring and how each are achieved in the cooking process. Here are some guidelines, courtesy of www.recipes.chef2chef.com.
The difference between seasoning and flavoring is this: seasoning is what you do to enhance the real flavor of the food you are eating. For example, when you put salt on steaks or grilled asparagus you are seasoning the food without masking it's basic flavor. Flavoring a food means you are changing its basic true flavor. When you coat a piece of fish with Cajun spices, you have flavored the fish.
The best time to season food is towards the end of the cooking time. That is when you decide if you have achieved the flavor you wanted. This is true especially with liquids. Soups and sauces that have too much seasoning (like salt) in the beginning of a recipe will reduce during the cooking period and have too strong of a flavor. Fine-tune it at the end.
Flavoring foods can take place throughout the cooking time, as most flavorings require heat to bring out the flavor. Some flavorings like fresh herbs, flamed wines, prepared mustards, cracked peppercorns can be added at the end as they will add instant flavor. Remember whole spices take longer to add flavor than ground spices.
| Guru Spotlight |
| Mary White |
